[wilson@cpuworks.com]

To type special characters on keyboards with separate numeric keypad is easy. Just hold down the ALT key, then (for example) 0169 on the numeric keypad, and hey presto:

©

But try that using the regular number keys (at the top): nothing.
Put on NumLock: nothing.

Who cares? Well, laptops, such as the one I use at home, have no such pad, so the only way I've found to get them is laborious: go to Character Map, make sure I have the right font, and select and copy that character, then return to original doc and paste it in:

©

Doable, but a pain. _Is_ there a way to do this with just a "normal" keyboard???

[hyjacked]

You might be able to do with with entries such as:
 
which is a space.
&gt; &lt; are the >< respectively.

there might be others.

[wilson@cpuworks.com]

Originally Posted by hyjacked

You might be able to do with with entries such as:
&nbsp;
which is a space.
&gt; &lt; are the >< respectively.

there might be others.

No, that is not what I meant. I am not asking about displaying these characters in an HTML page, but being able to type them at all, as into a document. I know there are special HTML characters like &gt; and &lt;, but I'm asking about the general problem of typing these special characters physically (something which is, as I said, easy if you have a numeric keypad).

[hyjacked]

oh, ok, well aside from creating shortcuts for the ones you use and doing it that way, I'm out of ideas.